Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,155

in which Ludivine would have reached out to him. It was not cowardice, she would have told him in that low, steady voice of hers. It was wisdom. You could not know what allies remained to you. The vision Corien sent had already thrust the night into chaos. You are the heir to the throne. If you had stayed that night and died, then the reign of Saint Katell and her descendants would truly have been lost.

But Audric’s mind remained his own, empty but for his whirling thoughts. With each footstep, even as he climbed through the mountain, he felt himself sinking back into the heavy, dark place from which he had only just begun to emerge in recent weeks. He longed to sleep, to tuck himself into a cold corner of these tunnels his ancestors had built and close his eyes forever.

But then Evyline, at the head of their procession, opened the hidden door carved into the mountain, and they emerged into the overgrown gardens behind Baingarde.

Audric stood aside at the tunnel’s mouth, allowing the others passage, and gazed at the familiar green world around him. So far from the castle, the gardens sprawled untamed. A profusion of ferns and tangled moonflower vines grew thick around the hidden door. A carpet of pine needles softened the ground, and overhead the trees grew tall and close.

The scent was so familiar that Audric felt lightheaded—the thick green spice of the shivering trees, the sweetness of old leaves rotting in the dirt. Past the wild growth near the door, far out in the jade gloom, a sorrow tree stood, its thin branches heavy with bright green buds and tiny pink blossoms. The first blooms of spring.

Audric could not tear his eyes from them. He had kissed Rielle for the first time beneath one of those trees. He knew he shouldn’t think of it, and yet he could not help doing so. The warmth of Rielle in his arms, the softness of her mouth. The eager noises she had breathed against his ear, her trembling hands in his hair. The sweet ache of happiness at finally allowing themselves to kiss.

Sloane touched his shoulder. He waited until his eyes were dry, then turned away from the sorrow tree. Kamayin was muttering instructions to her elementals, their castings faintly aglow. Evyline and the Sun Guard stood in a circle, all of them reciting the seven elemental rites.

Audric could hardly bear to look at them, these people who had decided they would fight at his side. They were so soft in the dim garden light, so breakable. If he had never loved Rielle, would they be standing there? Would a usurper sit on his throne? Would his father be dead and his mother a shell of her former self?

It would have been easier, he knew, if he had never loved her.

And yet, given the choice, he would do it again, even knowing what was to come. He would lose her a thousand times over if it meant he would first have the chance to love her.

They crossed the gardens to the catacombs, where another network of tunnels led into Baingarde itself. They connected to the mountain tunnels at several underground junctures; there had been no need to come to the surface. But Audric had wanted to see the gardens, even though he had known it would hurt him.

Near the catacombs, the seeing pools gleamed flat and black, like polished stones set into the ground. Memories of himself, Rielle, and Ludivine, young and uncaring, flitted across the pools like shadows.

Sloane kept near him as they hurried through the trees. Her short black hair shone blue in the pale moonlight. The polished obsidian orb of her scepter buzzed with ready power, and the shadows clung to her lovingly, like children to their parents’ legs.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Remembering the last time we were here? It was such a wild night, so long ago, and so rife with terror. I hardly remember what Baingarde looks like.”

“I remember it,” Audric said at once. “I see it in my dreams. I taste the cinnamon cakes I used to steal from the kitchens for Rielle. I can smell the old leather of my books. I can feel the cold hoof of Saint Katell’s stone mare in the Hall of the Saints. I used to sit on it and pray when I was a child, when I couldn’t sleep. I could tell you every stair that creaks in the servants’ wing.